


Answer Me to the Last Cry

by thisprettywren



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Community: thegameison_sh, Implied Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-01
Updated: 2011-06-01
Packaged: 2017-10-19 23:38:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/206455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisprettywren/pseuds/thisprettywren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson's world had been lit on fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Answer Me to the Last Cry

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Round 1, Cycle 3 of [thegameison_sh](http://community.livejournal.com/thegameison_sh). The prompt was "Spring."
> 
> Apologies/credit to Pablo Neruda.

"John." A pause. " _John._ "

John Watson's world had been lit on fire. Bursts of colour behind his closed eyelids; when he opened them, there was Sherlock's face filling his vision. _Oh,_ he thought, and for a moment it was what he'd wanted, but his chest hurt just a shade too much (the pavement just a shade too hard and unyielding against his back) to fool himself for long.

"You're repeating yourself," he said, voice harsh and breathless. Sherlock hummed an agreement and put just a little more of his weight against the source of the ache, pressing down, holding him together.

When John's vision cleared again he tried to look properly: red, pink, the sharp tang of rainwater. When he flicked his tongue against his lip he could taste it there.

Sherlock's eyes, pale and sharp, watching his face. "Would you rather I," he began, and John could see that he wouldn't be able to finish it. It didn't matter.

"He'll get away."

The expression of dismay (insult, bewilderment) on Sherlock's face was actually, genuinely funny. "He will not." The corner of his mouth twitched, and John thought he'd managed his own smile then. Good. That was good.

"No." John felt his eyelids close, dragged them open again. Not yet. "Keep pressure. Keep talking."

A long pause, and if Sherlock was at a loss for words--

"What spring does with cherry trees." A long swallow down the pale column of his throat, a twitch of his fingers against John's skin. "I want to-- I should have. That."

It was getting worse and better, both at once, sensation spiralling and distant. "Are you," John said with careful quarter-lungfuls of air, rationing his breath, "quoting," (yes) "poetry," (of course) "at me?" (obvious)

"Yes," Sherlock answered, simply. He had newly-finite quantities of his own; he was rationing, too. "Hold still."

John stared at him, the lines of tension drawing down from below his cheekbones, smoothing the area around his eyes, that beehive of frantic thought behind them. John's own mind had gone very, very quiet, quiet enough to hear them, a distant thrum in the distance.

"That bad, is it?" he asked, quietly, knowing the answer.

"Yes," Sherlock said again. He raised a hand to John's face, just for a moment. His fingers were dark, cherry-red. "It folds them up entirely," he said. "It... it seemed like...."

"Where," John interrupted, because he did understand; he was just-- _just_. He was. "Why did you read Pablo Naruda?" Meant: _when_ and _for whom_.

(Why did I? he wondered, and knew the answer: for this.)

"I didn't mean to remember it," Sherlock shrugged, a flash of irritation crossing his face and _oh_ , a wave of affection strong enough to hurt, somewhere below the sharp ache in John's chest, somewhere deeper (deep enough, said his brain, which was true as far as it went).

"It's a love poem," John said, because he was surrounded by the sort of soft pink that comes from mixing dark cherry-red with rainwater, the sort of pink one associates with cherry trees. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen them in spring, not properly, not in person, and the rain was washing it away.

"Yes."

"But _now_." A careful inhale; not enough. "You don't know--" John started, and it was the last he had in him.

"I do not," Sherlock said, spacing the words carefully, "but it seems I had it somewhere."

There were cherry blossoms in Sherlock's hair, on his face, as the distant beehive thrum resolved itself to the wail of sirens.

What the spring does, John thought, is _open them up,_ and he had no breath to explain.


End file.
